Three weeks until spring is officially upon us. Up here in Boston, that means we are due for some snow. A couple of years ago, Boston had a mild winter (as this one has been), only to get buried under more than a foot of snow on April 1. Yes, that's April Fool's Day. It was an ironic event to say the least.

In the gaming world, spring usually means that we start to see games that were promised for last Christmas but missed their deadlines. By the end of the spring season we
could be playing Heroes of Might and Magic IV, Dungeon Siege, Call of
Cthulhu, Mafia: City of Lost Heaven and (if the gods are merciful) Warcraft III -- all of which were, at one time or another, slated for earlier release. So, as the flowers bloom, so do some major game releases. Don't forget to give them water and at least an hour of sunlight each day (I mean the flowers). Off to the news

Renegades in the sky

Even as Command & Conquer: Renegade was just getting set up on
store shelves, Westwood announced that it
was developing new multiplayer maps for download. Even better, the company said
that a flying vehicle would be included for both the GDI and NOD forces. Besides
a troop transport helicopters for each, we will also get to fly the GDI Orca and Nod Apache
helicopters.

Do you feel skin-ny?

If you fancy yourself an industrious, 3D-modeling, texture-forming,
game-designer type then you may be interested in entering the Soldier of
Fortune II: Double Helix skinning contest. Being held by Raven Software, the
best skin will be included in the final release of the game. You can enter the
contest and download the tools right here.
The grand prize winner will also get a signed copy of the game and a PlayStation
2. Hot dang!

Resurrection of an original

If you think back to the early days of online gaming, you can't help but
remember Meridian59, the first graphical MMORPG that I can
remember making it to retail distribution. More than two years ago the game went
under and all but disappeared, but unknown to us mere mortals, it was really in
a sort of undead stasis, just waiting for the people at Near
Death Studios to bring it back to life. The game has risen and will be
available before the end of the month as Meridian 59: Resurrection. Reportedly,
many tweaks and bug fixes have taken place, making the game red-hot and ready to
go. Look for it soon.

Civilization user maps now available

As promised, Firaxis has opened up its user maps/mods page where players can download new content for
CivilizationIII. Right now there are only some player-created maps, but the company is inviting industrious gamers who have fashioned mods to send in their content. Look for updates regularly and there are sure to be some pleasant surprises.

What's up at Big Huge Games

While Sid Meier has his name on the boxes, games like Alpha Centauri and
Civilization III wouldn't be the class acts that they are without Brian Reynolds at the helm. Reynolds and some of his cohorts left Firaxis a while ago to for Big Huge Games and the fruits of their labors have culminated into a handsome-looking RTS called Rise of Nations. IGN.com recently took a close look at the game and offered such remarks as this:

" the combat is actually quite exciting to witness as there can literally be hundreds of animated, well-detailed units duking it out at one time. Today we saw musketeers, tanks, fighter planes, machine-gunners, and cavalry all vying for a piece of the world -- the tanks won."  Tal Blevins for IGN.com

If you're a fame of Age of Empires or Civilization, you owe it to yourself to take a peek at Rise of Nations and keep it on your radar  it's due early on 2003.

International Games Festival

This past weekend marked the first annual Microsoft International Games Festival. Held in Las Vegas, dozens of new games were revealed and shown off. Since I wasn't there (Bill mailed my personal VIP invitation to my address in the Swiss Alps  whoops), I must defer to the coverage offer at
Gamespot.com.

They gave it very good, in-depth coverage and offer a host of new details and screenshots on games like
Asheron's Call2, Links2003, Freelancer and
Dungeon Siege. Mysteriously, Microsoft opted not to offer any signs of Halo for the PC.
If you're interested, you can read all the coverage
here.